


Hostage

by Bool_Ji



Category: Marvel
Genre: Comfort Sex, Established Relationship, Hostage Situation, Insane Robots!, M/M, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-17
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:43:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bool_Ji/pseuds/Bool_Ji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Show me,” C-3 says, eyes boring into Strange’s stardust grays. “Show me what he has that makes him fit to rule. What does he have that makes him better than I?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fic requested by paleltuma ( http://theslowestdrawfag.tumblr.com/ ) on tumblr. 
> 
> Actual porn is in the second chapter. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Sometimes they go mad. If the human can barely hold onto his sanity at times, how can CPUs and memory cards contain the same?

The castle is prenaturally quiet, buzzing with an electric tension as the servants continue their daily routines. They resist the urge to look away from their work. They must let life go on. Because there _will_ be life after this. Right?

Boris shuts his eyes as a brilliant flash of light heralds the arrival of Doctor Stephen Strange. As spots of color fade from his vision, he says, “You received my message. Thank God.”

The sorcerer nods. “If you call, I will hear you. What is the situation?”

“Poor. Very poor.” As Boris details what has occurred, Stephen’s face falls. He steps into the throne room.

It has been ravaged. Huge gouges mar the granite walls, the marble floor. Shattered glass covers the ground. The air smells of smoke and animal anger. Nothing moves.

The only sound is a steady drip-drip-drip of the clear liquid, ghost blood, that flows through the veins of the _kísértet_ -class Doombot.

The robot is a doppelganger of the man who is on his knees at its side.

Both of them are badly damaged. The _kísértet_ ’s wires and tubes are falling out of its belly like loops of entrails; their shifted weight makes the Doombot unable to stand erect. A deep gash in its shoulder is leaking a puddle of pale fluid onto the ground.

Victor himself is favoring his left knee. His gauntlets are in shreds, ridges of red, torn skin between jagged edges of metal. His mask is missing. A line of blood oozes from his scalp between his eyes and over his nose, over his scars, crimson drops waving with each deep, steady breath.

The _kísértet_ has a gun to his head.

Stephen fights down a shiver of fear at the sight. He jokes about his partner’s hard head (Doom’s voice pipes up in his mind, an unbidden, unstoppable memory: _It’s saved your hide more than once, Strange_ ), but if the _kísértet_ — identification number C-3 — squeezes the trigger just a fraction of a Newton harder, that crazy genius _beautiful_ mind will be nothing but gray matter on the floor.

“Why?”

The Doombot speaks. Its voice sounds different. Whether from damage or by conscious decision, Stephen cannot tell.

“Why him?” C-3 asks, nudging the barrel of the gun against Victor’s temple, “Why does he rule?”

Stephen knows he’s playing with very high stakes. “He overthrew the last king of Latveria,” he carefully says, “And reinstated himself as monarch.”

C-3 chuckles, and Stephen’s stomach flips over in panic as he braces himself for the gunshot, the spray of brain and skull. It doesn’t come.

“Tradition,” the _kísértet_ says. Its metal mouth appears to grin. “Simple…tradition. Look.”

It taps the gun against Victor’s head. The king bobs with the motion but has no other reaction.

“My name is Victor von Doom,” the robot continues, “ _Kísértet_ -class self-sustaining AI unit number C-3. I was born in a forest. Mechanical arms welded copper contacts into my head. My mother was a witch. I perform over ten trillion calculations per second based on solid-state drives which surpass two hundred fifty-six gigabytes. I woke up with a hangover on May 26, 1988 in New York City. My neural network is constructed from carbon nanotubes. I have killed men with my bare hands. I am a backup plan in the worst case scenario.”

C-3 looks up at Stephen. “Something is wrong here.”

“What is it?” Strange wants the _kísértet_ to keep talking. Perhaps that prevents it from shooting his partner.

“Two sets of memories. One belongs to a machine. The other belongs to a man. I recollect my past, see images, respond with the programmed emotion. But do I feel?” C-3 glances at the gun. “It is all a jumble of ones and zeroes. HAPPY. SAD. ANGRY. Calculations summoned in a heartbeat.” The Doombot laughs again. “I do not have a heart.”

The entire time, Victor has been silent. He hasn’t moved an inch. Stephen realizes it may be because he is in incredible pain.

“Why him?” C-3 gazes down at the king. “It must be a terrible burden to feel. I see burning bodies, towering skyscrapers, ancient forests. All numbers. No reaction. Yet I am designed to react. Reaction is my ultimate purpose. React, and lead when this one falls. Why wait? As a creature with emotion, true emotion, his reaction time is far greater than my own. He is not fit to rule.”

Stephen’s hands tremble. He balls them into fists to rein in the involuntary motion.

C-3 notices. Its fiber-optics lock onto the sorcerer’s face. “I look at you,” it says, “and I feel nothing. You must mean something. Three point twenty-six minutes into the battle, he sent a technopathic message to _polip_ -class AI unit 525. _Követel Stephen_. _Polip_ -class AI unit 525 is a damaged entity. Invoking it for a task was a move designed to confuse, to dismiss. Not so.”

Out of anything said thus far, this wrings a reaction out of Victor. He shoots Strange a look, rust brown eyes shot through with veins. They are apologetic. He never meant for Stephen to be involved this way.

Stephen’s heart throbs painfully. He hopes Victor knows he will rescue him from the mad _kísértet_. Then they will return home to the Sanctum, he will patch up his wounds, and they can have a nice talk about domestic disputes.

C-3 whips the butt of the gun down on Victor’s temple. The king recoils from the blow but doesn’t cry out. He returns to his position, despite the heavier stream of blood pouring down his face, forcing an eye shut.

“Stop it!” C-3 shouts, “Whatever communication passes between you, stop it!” It presses the barrel against Victor’s head again. Harder.

“Put the gun down!” Stephen cries, lifting his hands. The tremble is worse.

“Show me,” C-3 says, eyes boring into Strange’s stardust grays. “Show me what he has that makes him fit to rule. What does he have that makes him better than I?”

Stephen’s guts turn to ice. No magic he possesses can make an individual feel raw emotion. The _kísértet_ isn’t even flesh and blood. It is a machine. It does not have the components to feel. He would describe color to a blind man.

There is nothing he can do.

C-3’s finger tightens on the trigger.


	2. 2

The concussion sustained from the _kísértet_ ’s blow made the time just after the stand-off a blur of color and light and sound. Stephen never left Victor’s side, hurrying him to the castle infirmary — after complying to his demand to replace his mask. He listened to the delirious words spilling from Doom’s lips as doctors examined his hands.

“ _Soha többé_ ,” he muttered, over and over, “ _Soha többé_.”

The damages came to a tibial plateau fracture of his left knee, dozens of breaks in the bones of his hands, several lacerations and burns of the flesh of his hands, and said concussion.

But he was alive, and the mad ghost was dead. For that, Stephen was very grateful.

Still…it pained him to see his partner this way.

It was five past eleven in Latveria. Stephen Strange emerged from the bathroom, clad only in a pair of night-pants, toweled off his hair, and looked at the four-post bed adorned in green he shared with the king.

Doom already lay in it, on his right side, staring out the open balcony door at the night sky. His hands were tightly wrapped in bandages. Despite the incredible medicinal advances available to his people, the severity of the injuries kept them gnarled up like dead moths. The doctors told them to expect a week of recovery.

Seven days of inability to even hold a pen.

Stephen knew that fathomless, light-speed mind was therefore trapped and throwing itself against the bars of its cage. And that hurt more than any physical pain.

Strange sat on his side of the bed. No biting quips or caustic pleasantries from the king. The sorcerer fingered the towel. The unusual silence made him uneasy, made him wonder if the head injury was worse than previously thought, if Victor hadn’t been so goddamn stubborn and insisted he was fine — in Latverian, which Stephen didn’t understand —

“Memory bleed,” Doom said, “It happens. I thought I had weeded the problem out.”

He could still talk. Stephen was relieved. “Memory bleed?”

“ _Kísértet_ -class Doombots have my own memories implanted in cores in their heads, and they also retain knowledge of how they were built, the parts they consist of… The second law of thermodynamics: in any cyclic process, entropy increases. All it took was a slightly faulty core…” Doom trailed off. After a moment, he continued, “C-3 pinned my hands under its foot and turned on its repulsor jets. The battle unraveled after that. C-3 acquired my gun, tore off my mask…perhaps witnessing my face was the final push into full-on madness.”

Victor shrugged. “I cannot fix what has come to pass. I understand the problem. It can be corrected. However…” He lifted his hands, alien mollusks in white plaster shells, and let them drop to the forest green sheets.

Stephen waited patiently, silently. He could read the symptoms without being explicitly told. A developing case of restlessness, which, if not caught early, would decay into irritable heart syndrome and blindness of the mind’s eye. Lethal to anyone in Doom’s way. Difficult to treat. The king had to _want_ to be treated.

Strange was familiar with the disease. He had caught it before himself.

“Stephen.”

Doom looked over his shoulder. In the dying light cast by the fireplace, his brown skin glowed, his short hair illuminated dark auburn. His rust brown eyes were bright as if an internal flame burned within.

They glittered with the pain of concepts attempting to be born.

“I need you.”

Stephen joined the king on the bed. “How do you need me?”

Doom sat up on his elbows and kissed the sorcerer. Stephen kissed him back, relishing the familiar taste of aluminum and fire. He reached down to remove his pants and Doom broke the kiss, a bandaged hand touching Strange’s own.

“Variations on a theme,” the king said.

 _Oh_. Like _that_ , then.

Stephen kissed him again, tenderly. He straddled Doom and Victor let him, brushing bound fingers against his cheek, touch plaster rough. The sorcerer’s own hands, steady, perhaps with only the slightest tremble in anticipation, trailed down skin puckered with scars. Palms perked dark brown nipples into hard nubs as their lips met over and over, speaking words that could not be spoken out loud. No, to say what Victor felt turned his stomach to ice. Doom admitted no weakness.

While the king’s mind was still armored, still too riddled with fake passageways and alien angles, Stephen could see just as well with his heart as with his third eye. He replied to silenced words with his lips, with hands that pushed the covers down and stroked tan skin and scars — the one that looked like a waning moon, the parallel triplets, the target and the ones that had no shape —

Doom moaned quietly, hips rising as Stephen took his erection in hand, stroking it firmly. “Strange—”

It would be good tonight. Good, gentle, but not too much. Enough for a man with broken hands, not for a weeping virgin.

Just the right amount for someone who wanted a reminder that he was not a mad ghost himself.

Victor cursed as he fumbled for the tube of lubricant tucked under a pillow. Stephen grabbed it for him and kissed away his frustration, thumb toying with the moist slit at the head of his cock. When they parted, Strange looked deep into fiery eyes.

“Like this, then?”

“Like this,” Doom confirmed, voice composed and confident.

Stephen slicked his fingers, canted Doom’s leg against his hip, and kissed him again as he carefully slid a digit inside his partner. The king was tight — it was a rare occasion when he let this happen. Stephen was thorough, stretching him with two fingers now, keeping preparation easy with a taste of an edge, a reassurance he wasn’t treating Victor like a porcelain doll.

 _One that is remarkably good at pulling itself back together_ , Stephen thought, and he kissed the pulse in Doom’s neck to dispel the idea. A hand flew to his hair, and while the tape and gauze holding it in one piece could barely move, that and the smouldering gaze in the king’s eyes got the message across clearly. _Not a doll or a robot at all, this one — a rare creature that walked right out of a myth, one that can shed its tail when under attack but always grows a new one_.

 _And you’re about to fuck him, doctor_.

“Do it, Strange,” Victor snarled, rocking his hips back on the three fingers Stephen had inside him.

A wave of urgency overtook the sorcerer. He tugged down his night pants far enough to free his erection, coated it in lube with a hiss of pleasure — remembering his own need and desire was very much a player in this, even if it was for Doom’s sake — slid his fingers out of the king, coaxed his legs apart and coaxed himself in.

It was a tight fit. Stephen groaned, head hanging as he braced himself against the sheets and waited for Doom to adjust. Victor was as quiet as ever; if he was in pain he didn’t show it. Finally rust brown eyes opened, bandaged hands resting on Strange’s shoulders.

“ _Stephen_ ,” he said, the name leaving him on a withheld breath.

Strange began to move, thrusting his hips into Doom, drizzling extra lube where they were joined to make the slide easier, better for them both. The king was tight and soft and welcoming inside, and while he kept his noises restrained, he told Stephen he enjoyed the treatment by moving with him, breathing harder, one hand creeping into his silver-streaked hair.

Stephen couldn’t help but moan his pleasure, bucking into the heat surrounding his cock. The act ate away at his stamina shockingly fast, unused to this role in their nightly activities, but he was not going to come before his partner. He wrapped a slick palm around Doom’s erection, stroking him, hips pounding into his prostate. The raw moan wrung from rough lips and the wetness that suddenly covered Stephen’s hand and the clench of hot muscle inside dragged an orgasm out of the sorcerer himself—

When the world stopped spinning and the stars fell from his eyes, Strange gently pulled out of his partner and lingered above him, panting for breath. Sweat trickled from his brow. The room smelled like sex.

Powerful arms wrapped around him, holding him close. Doom breathed him in, scars buried in black hair, gentle as if the entire situation had been orchestrated for Strange’s sake. Quietly: “Thank you.”

And Stephen smiled, for somewhere in that mind, that collection of shadows and chains and sheet metal and monsters, there was a place for him. He knew inside his own soul there was an area of forest green and stainless silver that he would never remove — even if he could.

Strange kissed Doom, cuddling close. “Whenever you need me, my love, I’ll be there.”


End file.
